Three
Bears Butte Three
Bears Butte
The following article appeared in the Montana Standard on April 20, 2006.
Three Bears gets tax break
By Roberta Forsell Stauffer of The Montana Standard - 04/20/2006
Three Bears Alaska Inc. won unanimous council approval Wednesday night for the tax break it requested, with a few “good neighbor” conditions attached.
Testimony at the public hearing was overwhelmingly in favor of letting the warehouse-like grocery store chain ramp up to full local property tax payments over 10 years. Fourteen testified in favor, with two against.
Brooks Hanna, who last year moved and greatly expanded his Ford dealership, praised Butte-Silver Bow officials for “acting like they want business to come to Butte” by supporting incentives such as these.
“Attitude and momentum — we absolutely cannot stop either one of them,” Hanna said.
The Holly Lane neighborhood lies just north of the proposed store location on Mount Highland Drive, and resident Tom Richardson also happens to be a lawyer with plenty of land use experience. He stressed the importance of mitigating the store’s impact on neighbors and even supplied a list of suggested conditions.
Commissioner Mike Kerns represents that district and added some of Richardson’s conditions to his motion in favor of the tax break.
They’ll ensure Three Bears installs a buffer of trees on its north side to shield neighbors. The store must also keep impacts from lighting and signage to a minimum.
Steve Mierop, Three Bears’ chief financial officer, said he had no problem with the conditions. He also pledged to extend the walking trail along Mount Highland Drive and landscape around it.
“We do everything everywhere we are to be a good neighbor,” Mierop said.
When Commissioner Mike Sheehy asked whether the tax break brought Three Bears to Butte, Mierop said it was definitely part of the reason, but a lot of other factors also made Butte attractive.
The company has five stores in Alaska, and Mierop said company officials toured communities in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana before settling on Butte as its first proposed location in the lower 48.
After the meeting, Mierop said the decision to build won’t be final “until the dirt starts flying,” but this tax break approval is a major hurdle. The company will be spared around $400,000 in payments over its first decade, but it will still end up paying nearly $1 million in taxes during that time.
He said the company still needs to put together the financing for this major project, but its lender “will look favorably on the fact that the community is supporting it with this tax abatement.” The main opponent to the tax incentive was Nicolai Cocergine, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local No. 4. He said he represented 300 union members and their families who believe that giving tax breaks to retail businesses is “bad business.” “If continued, every business will expect it,” Cocergine said.
He said the county needs every tax dollar it can get to pay for infrastructure and public services.
“Three Bears is coming to Butte because they know they could do a good business here and they need to pay their fair share of taxes to this community,” he said, adding that the break will provide the company with an unfair economic advantage.
“Do you plan on giving existing employers a similar tax relief?” he asked.
Some communities charge impact fees to allow retailers to locate there, Cocergine said, and he asked whether county officials considered that for Three Bears.
After the hearing, Chief Executive Paul Babb said he views impact fees as just another hurdle that could discourage new businesses from coming to Butte.
“Until we get some development going, we do not need to be looking at impact fees,” Babb said.
© 2006 Three Bears Alaska, Inc.